The Ghost of You
by Cherie-24-Addict
Summary: On the surface, it's a letter tinged with anger and some regret.  Once you scratch it, it's nothing less than a declaration of suffering, longing, and heart-on-his-sleeve devotion to the woman he should never have fallen in love with in the first place.


April 15, 2013

_I never said I'd lie in wait forever_

_If I died we'd be together_

_I can't always just forget her_

_But she could try..._

_"The Ghost of You" - My Chemical Romance_

I'm so tired.

I sit here writing a letter you will never read, writing a pointless stringing of words together that only I will see. You will never get that adorable, twisted look of shock you always get when you're hit upside the head with something, you will never curl up in my arms and tell me it'll be okay, and you will never tell me that you'll always be there for me. Or that you love me.

And that part's okay. I've accepted the fact that I'm never going to be happy with you. It's just that – whenever I think of you I get this awful pain in my chest, a tear in my eye, and a tendency to babble unintelligently about whatever's going on around me. And that used to be a good thing, because that's what used to be me when you so much as looked at me. But I'm just so sick of the feeling, and I want to be free. Why do I have to suffer through this pain, an agony I've never felt before, over you?

In a lot of ways, what you do just disgusts me. You throw your flirtation and bedroom charm around like there's no tomorrow. You don't care about whose life you're wrecking today; it's all about the sensation, the adrenaline, the feeling that you're doing something you shouldn't and you fucking love it. I at least have the decency to only use my dapper charm for work-related purposes and the occasional girl at the bar. I don't go out every night expecting to get laid and then wake up and move on like nothing happened.

And that's just the beginning. Shall I go on? You're more private than a hermit, more alluring than anything I could have ever dreamed up, you dress like a whore while walking like a queen, you drop as much sexual innuendo as I gather up job offers (which, by the way, is a lot). You see emotion as a weakness and spite anyone who shows it, just because you have a major case of insecurity. You have this gaping hole in your chest that you want to fill with sex and desire and riding high on life and adrenaline rushes, but it's the kind of hole that can only be filled by revealing yourself to another person. Accepting that you are a vulnerable person. Much as you may try to seem like it, you are not a robot.

But the thing is, sweetheart, no matter how much I want to tear my hair out around you, no matter how much you fuck with my cases, no matter how closed-off you are from everyone around you, no matter how tantalizing your ass looks in that skirt today… okay, maybe I'm getting a little off topic. Lawyers are notorious question-dodgers, and so when an old friend asked me almost two years ago to the day why I'm so hell-bent on protecting you, I did what lawyers do best – deny, then lie, because I don't stick my neck out for just anybody. He tried to make me confess that I'm in love with you. Believe me, sweetheart, I'm not in love with you. Cary Agos doesn't fall in love; he makes other people worship the ground he walks on. Maybe if I say it enough I'll actually start to believe that I haven't made the biggest mistake of the last ten years. **madly scribbles out the last sentence, because, let's face it, that was just a _stupid_ thing to write.**

And now you're gone. You've up and left Chicago because of the Peter Florrick scandal, and now I don't get to meet your beautiful face for coffee to negotiate over cases, or play drinking games, or skulk around Chicago alleyways with you, or find myself pulling out all the stops for a woman who doesn't even love me the way I…

You know what? Fuck this. I don't have to live with this. You're gone. You're probably never coming back. You'll assume another identity, find somewhere to do some investigative work in a big city where no one will ever find you, and start all over again. Leela, Kalinda – maybe Neldina this time? Whoever you are, you won't be Kalinda, and no one but Kalinda Sharma ever had room in their life for me. The real me. The one people were scared that they might actually get to know and like if they let him in.

Well, then. Guess this is the goodbye you'll never see, and the way I'm kicking my own ass for never telling you that despite your insanity you've still managed to make me fall just a little in love with you. And even with all the sins you've committed, all the tears other people have shed over your carelessness, I'm still going to wish that you hadn't been so damn stubborn. I love you, god damn it, and my world is turning kind of upside down and I'm looking for you to talk to and make a sarcastic comment and transparent threat to reveal something distasteful about the other person. Then I realize you're the other person, and you're not here. You're a ghost.

And I'm just the miserable workaholic sitting in his apartment alone, having a shot of Monster (thanks for the addiction sweetheart), wondering where the hell things went so wrong.

_Cary D. Agos_


End file.
